‘Anonymous operating system’ prompts security warnings

Warnings have been issued to internet users who have downloaded an operating system purportedly created by members of the Anonymous hacker group.

The ‘official’ Anonymous group claims not to be behind the operating system

Anonymous-OS 0.1, which comes with a number of hacking tools, has been downloaded by tens of thousands of people but security experts have warned the software could be riddled with viruses.

The ‘official’ Anonymous group has distanced itself from the software and claimed on Twitter it is ‘wrapped in trojans’.

The creators of the operating system, which is based on a version of the open-source operating system Linux, have denied the presence of viruses and said it was created for ‘checking the security of web pages’.

Graham Cluley, senior researcher at hi-tech security firm Sophos, warned: ‘Who would want to put their trust in a piece of unknown software written by unknown people on a webpage that they don’t know is safe or not?

‘Folks would be wise to be very cautious.’

The software was initially made available through the SoundForge site but it has since been taken down by the hosting platform.

‘By taking an intentionally misleading name, this project has attempted to capitalise on the press surrounding a well-known movement in order to push downloads of a project that is less than a week old,’ SourceForge wrote on its blog.